Organized Violence and Organized Abandonment Beyond the Human: the Case of Brucellosis among Palestinians in Israel
Osama Tanous, Rabea Eghbariah
Abstract
The importance of this article is the novelty in combining public health, colonial studies, and legal research to understand the ecology of human brucellosis. This approach allows us to move from a "snap-shot" reading of diseases and cultural practices toward a reading of bacteria, animals, and humans within their political and historical context. The article uses a settler colonial lens to examine the racialized distribution of human brucellosis in Israel and traces colonial policies toward Palestinians and goats-both seen as unwanted intruders to the newly established Israeli nation state. We place these policies in a context of organized violence and organized abandonment, building on the work of Ruth Wilson Gilmore to read the power hierarchies of humans, animals, and diseases and how they shape practices and disease.